


A Way Forward

by icandrawamoth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dreams, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Gen, Hope, How Do I Tag, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rogue Squadron, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, Toasting, Visions, idk which really, they're like literal alternate universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 03:06:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13262319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icandrawamoth/pseuds/icandrawamoth
Summary: After the tattered remains of the Resistance make their escape from Crait, Wes dreams of three faces and a squadron that hasn't existed for thirty years.





	A Way Forward

**Author's Note:**

> Woooo, today my brain suddenly figured out how to fuse two concepts I've been chewing on for awhile: Wes possibly being the only one of the Fab Four still alive in canon and the idea of Legends and Disney canon as actual alternate universes with some sort of interplay between them. And thus this fic was born!

Wes has experienced a lot in his time, fought many seemingly unwinnable battles and lived to see the other side, but he was there on Crait, and like all of them, for a moment, he thought they were goners, the Resistance finished, hope torn from the galaxy at last. It was sobering, to be at end of everything he'd fought for for so long. Then Luke had appeared and the girl Rey, and then the handful of survivors was blasting off on the Millennium Falcon, everyone shell-shocked and thankful to be alive.

Of course they couldn't afford to just stand around wild-eyed for long, though. Their numbers are decimated. They've lost nearly all of their equipment. The existence of outside allies who didn't answer their call at the most desperate hour is questionable.

They need a plan.

But even all the talking in the galaxy can only help so much in the present moment. They're all tense and distracted, grieving friends and loved ones and fearing what the future holds. After awhile, Leia gives those circled around her a kind smile and dismisses them, tells them to try and get some rest while the ship sets course for a temporary hiding spot in the Outer Rim where they hope to regroup with other evacuation teams not seen since D'Qar. The hope there is slim, but it's something.

Wes paces the ship, restless and uneasy. He's been helping to oversee the Resistance's Starfighter Corps nearly since its inception, and now it's gone. Sure, Poe Dameron lives, and he's as fine a pilot as Wes has ever known, but he's alone and a pilot without a ship. Every single fighter went down with the _Raddus_ , and it won't be easy to get more. A quiet, harsh sound slips from his throat, the corpse of a laugh. It's not as if they can pay for them now.

“Wes.” It's Leia's voice as he passes by the cockpit on another lap of the ship. She gives him a look. “Rest.” She tilts a head toward the empty jumpseat.

Wes sighs and drops into it, scrubbing his hands over his face.

“Even if you can't sleep, stop trying to wear a hole in the floor,” Leia tells him gently. “It's twelve hours until we come out of hyperspace.”

Wes nods wordlessly. He know she's right. There's no more to say for now; they all need to rest, recuperate, try to get back to themselves so they can return to the fight. He thinks, after everything, with the way the adrenaline is still burning itself off, that he won't actually be able to sleep, but he makes himself stretch out and recline in the seat anyway. It's far from comfortable, and he's sure he'll regret it when he gets up again, but it's the best he's going to get. He makes himself close his eyes and concentrate on the sounds of the ship, engines whirring, sensors reporting all normal. It's always been a comforting environment for him, and even now it's something he can cling to.

Soon, he is drifting, and then he's dreaming, a scene more vivid then he remembers having in years. He finds himself in a pilots' rec room, not one he's seen before, but that has the look of such places the galaxy over. It's filled with people, most of them indistinct and unfamiliar at the edges of his vision, going about the usual business of relaxing, drinking, talking together.

Wes himself is sitting at a table with three other men, and these he can see clearly. So clearly.

To his left is Hobbie Klivian, and, gods, how long has it been since Wes thought of his old friend? He looks exactly as he had the day before he was lost in the Battle of Hoth, courageously crashing his stricken snowspeeder into an AT-AT's cockpit to take it out on the way down. They used to tease him about how unlucky he was, and it had finally caught up with him.

To Wes's right is another familiar face. Wedge Antilles, so young here, looking fresh off the defeat of the second Death Star, and Wes burns with the sadistic irony that it was the third planet killer the galaxy saw that was the charm to finally take down the seemingly-unkillable pilot along with the rest of the Hosnian system.

Across the table is someone Wes doesn't recognize. Blonde-haired and blue-gazed, he's smiling, but his eyes are sad. Wes gets the impression he always looks that way. He's sure he's never met this man, but he has that quality things in dreams sometimes do of seeming thoroughly familiar just the same, as if Wes knows him just as well as the others.

“To Rogue Squadron!” Wedge calls, raising his drink, and the others echo him with their own, the rest of the pilots around the room joining in.

Everyone seems to look at Wes expectantly. He stares at the glass on the table in front of him, thinks of Rogue Squadron, a name he hasn't heard in nearly thirty years. The elite group of starfighter pilots he was one a part of who took on the Rebellion's most important and dangerous missions. The squadron that was disbanded as part of the well-intentioned but foolish Military Disarmament Act.

Wes picks up his glass with a grin and raises it. “To Rogue Squadron!”

The four of them clink their glasses together enthusiastically, sharing a laugh as liquid jumps rims and sprinkles over the table. Wes drinks, looking at his friends (because they are friends, lifelong friends, all of them, he can feel it as deep as any truth), and they're all smiling, all happy. Hopeful.

That's when he wakes up. There's a bittersweet ache in his chest but a fire in his belly. He knows what he has to do.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Return of the Rogues](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633904) by [icandrawamoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icandrawamoth/pseuds/icandrawamoth)
  * [Liminal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17618429) by [thedarlingone (Curuchamion)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curuchamion/pseuds/thedarlingone)




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